Monday, May 17, 2010

Beware the Poop Police

The main reason I'm glad I don't live in a condo or belong to any residential association is that I just couldn't tolerate the sheer stupidity that inevitably accompanies such an arrangement. Consider what's happening at the Scarlett Place condominium in Baltimore.

It appears that some pampered pooch has been pooping on the premises, and the dog's owner has been rather lax in extracting the execrable excrement. So the condo board, in a display of Solomonic wisdom, is proposing that all dogs in the building undergo DNA tests in an effort to discover the culprit:

Under the proposal, every dog at Scarlett Place and guest dogs would be swabbed for a DNA sample — owners would then have to pay $50 each to cover the test and supplies. Dog owners would also pay an extra $10 per month per dog to cover the cost of having the building's staff scoop poop and send it to a lab. Feces, like saliva, contains tell-tale DNA.

If the lab identifies your dog as the pooper, that's a $500 fine.

Richard Hopp, an attorney and dog owner who has lived in the building for four years, summed up perfectly the idiocy of such a proposal: "I feel like I'm living in a Seinfeld episode."